Art and commentary by Kimberly Harris

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Obama’s Magic Loafers and the Solitary Rose

President Obama is on the asteroid Vesta along with a lone rose

President Obama travels to the asteroid Vesta to escape the stress of the debt ceiling debate

On July 6, 2011, President Obama conducted a Twitter Town Hall Meeting where he addressed the future of America’s space program. He spoke enthusiastically about the need to redirect NASA’s vision away from its current model that is rooted in the past and focus instead on aggressive new objectives, like a manned mission to Mars. The president further stated “A good pit stop is an asteroid. I haven’t actually — we haven’t identified the actual asteroid yet, in case people are wondering.”

Late tonight the Dawn spacecraft will rendezvous with the giant asteroid Vesta. Dawn was launched in September 2007 and has now completed the first 117 million mile leg of its historic journey. The probe is scheduled to orbit the protoplanet until July 2012 to take scientific measurements and transmit back images before proceeding on to the asteroid Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.

As the Dawn spacecraft begins it year-long mission, President Obama is engaging in a difficult mission of his own right here in inner space on Earth. He is tasked with persuading opposing congressional factions to compromise on issues relating to the urgent need to raise the ceiling on the national debt before default occurs on August 2nd. After a particularly acrimonious meeting with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday, the President decided to walk out of the negotiations, as it was evident to him that they were going nowhere.

Frustrated and weary by these stressful events, the President concluded that he needed to get away for a spell. Camp David wasn’t really an option, so he decided to perform the ultimate escape to a place where he could experience some peace and quiet and contemplate the state of world affairs in solitude.

With a sharp click of the heels of his magic loafers, a flock of migrating wild geese suddenly appeared and swiftly transported President Obama to Vesta, arriving well ahead of the Dawn probe. To his amazement, the first thing he saw was a lone rose growing in the dry, dusty soil of the arid asteroid.

Recalling a long-forgotten lecture from a world literature class from the distant past, the President realized that he was standing on the very planet that was the home of the Little Prince described by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry nearly 70 years ago. The little man had appeared to Saint-Exupéry in the Sahara Desert where he had performed an emergency landing to repair the engine of the plane he was flying. The President further recalled the conversations the Prince had with the flower and the tenderness with which he cared for it. In particular, he remembered the instance where the Prince was concerned that his beloved flower would be eaten by a sheep during his absence. In comforting the distressed young Prince, Saint-Exupéry promised to draw a muzzle for the sheep so it could not eat the precious flower.

Then, in an inspired flash of genius, President Obama drew two muzzles, one for the House Majority Leader and another for the House Speaker. His problem was finally solved!

Illustration by Kim Harris
Story by Don Rudisuhle

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Animals, Current events, Fantasy, Politics

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The League of Women Voters at the Fourth of July Picnic

Four stern looking ladies sit at the League of Women Voters table

The League of Women Voters ladies are ready to answer all of your questions

Every year The League of Women Voters sets up a table at our town’s Fourth of July Celebration in the park. It is a festive occasion with live music, barbecue, burger and ice cream vendors, classic car exhibitions, fire trucks and rides for children. The event would not be complete without the tables staffed by volunteers from the two major political parties who hand out literature and free watermelon slices in the hopes of retaining visitors long enough to persuade them that their particular political positions and candidates are the ones to support in forthcoming elections.

While I enjoyed the watermelon on this hot summer day, I felt compelled to return to the LMV table. I thought this would be a great opportunity to ask the knowledgeable ladies a few questions about our state’s electoral process. In particular, I wanted them to explain the rational behind the rule that excludes voters who are registered independents from voting in the primary elections.

Illustration by Kim Harris
Story by Don Rudisuhle

I got the feeling my questions annoyed them and they would rather I just went away.

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Current events, Politics

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Representative Weiner Standing Tall in Statuary Hall

Congressman Weiner’s statue resembles Michelangelo’s David

New York Rep. Anthony David Weiner is immortalized in stone in the nation’s capitol

New York Representative Anthony David Weiner was smitten by the extensive publicity that he attracted with the widely tweeted and re-tweeted images of his manly physique. This led the congressman to decide that it would be more than appropriate that his hard body be immortalized in stone for the benefit of future generations.

During the free time afforded by his leave of absence from Congress and his stint at the New York Narcissism Rehab Clinic, the congressman performed some in-depth Internet research and was successful in locating a direct descendant of famed Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, who turned out to be a retired plumber and part-time hobby sculptor who lives in New Jersey and who goes simply by “Mike Angelo.”

The congressman and Mike discussed the project and sketched out a rough design. Mike produced a 1/10 scale clay model which Rep. Weiner immediately approved. A few wealthy constituents generously provided the necessary funding and the project was launched. Before long, the final marble rendering was delivered on time and within budget and was on its way to the Capitol for inclusion in Statuary Hall to take its rightful place alongside other American luminaries.

Illustration by Kim Harris
Story by Don Rudisuhle

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Current events, Politics

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Governor Blagojevich’s Otherworldly Trial

Governor Blagojevich is on trial on an alien planet

Governor Blagojevich reacts to his unexpected sentence

The retrial of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has now entered its third month. People who follow the news will recall the high-profile scandal involving the former governor who was accused of corruption and abuses of power during the latter part of his tenure. The most prominent allegation was that Blagojevich had schemed to use his position to fill the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama in exchange for personal gain. There were other allegations involving improprieties relating to state funding for Children’s Memorial Hospital and the sale of Wrigley Field. It is a twisted tale indeed and former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley once called Blagojevich “cuckoo” to which the governor replied “I don’t think I’m cuckoo.”

Cuckoo or not, the governor’s fortunes began a precipitous decline following his arrest in December 2008 on federal charges of corruption. Talk of impeachment immediately followed and led Blagojevich to announce that if somehow his actions during his tenure constituted impeachable offenses then “I’m on the wrong planet and I’m living in the wrong place.”

Shortly thereafter, in January 2009, he was impeached by the Illinois House of Representatives and subsequently by the Illinois State Senate. In April 2009 he was indicted by a federal grand jury and in August 2010 he was convicted of lying to the FBI, which was only one of the 24 charges he faced, the jury having been hung on the other 23 counts. The prosecution immediately announced that they would seek a retrial on these counts.

The governor repeatedly sought to have the charges dismissed and the trial halted. Defense counsel argued that the case had received such extensive publicity that all of the potential jurors on planet Earth had already been tainted by the many news stories that portrayed Blagojevich unfairly and published inaccurate characterizations of his actions. Taking into account the governor’s statement about being on the wrong planet and anticipating an unfavorable verdict from a hopelessly biased jury, the defense attorneys requested a change of venue to another planet outside of our solar system. U.S. District Judge James Zagel obliged and agreed to move the trial to Gliese 581d, an earthlike exoplanet located about 20 light years from Earth.

In response to the court’s request, friendly aliens from the underground extraterrestrial base in Dulce, New Mexico promptly dispatched a saucer to transport the governor and his defense team to Gliese 581d, a planet they know as Zugzigvy.

The jurors were dismissed and Blagojevich was promptly ushered into a disc under the cover of darkness. The craft departed and entered into a wormhole just behind the moon and arrived at Zugzigvy so quickly that the governor did not even have time to arrange his hair.

As soon as he landed, the Governor was arraigned before a Zugzivian Imperial Anti-Corruption Magistrate. Unfortunately for the governor, the Zugzivian people have no tolerance for corruption and misconduct on the part of their elected officials. Their society is much more advanced than our own and has long evolved past the primitive state whereby elected officials abuse their positions with impunity and betray the trust of their constituents. Corruption is viewed as a very serious crime and the governor’s bench trial lasted less than an hour before he was pronounced guilty on all 23 counts.

Zugzivians do not routinely imprison criminals as this is viewed as a waste of public resources. Instead, they mandate various forms of community service that are designed to rehabilitate the offender while at the same time contributing to the advancement of science and medicine.

Science fiction fans will be familiar with the accounts of alien abductees who assert that they were the objects of invasive and humiliating medical examinations on the part of their extraterrestrial captors. The governor will be no exception, and Nurse Gszkwy stands ready with her multipurpose probing instrument in anticipation of his arrival.

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Current events, Extraterrestrials, Fantasy, Politics

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The Three Graces of Greek Mythology Have Not Aged Well

The aging Three Graces of Greek Mythology on the couch

Life’s worries and woes have taken their toll on the Three Graces of Greek Mythology.

A few days ago, the respected Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency downgraded Greece’s short-term sovereign debt from “B” to “C” status, effectively reducing it to junk status. The long-term debt didn’t fare much better, plunging from “BB-“ to “B,” making it a highly speculative investment.

Years of overspending. Unsustainable deficits in excess of 10% of GDP. 16% unemployment. Labor unrest. Student riots. Burgeoning public debt. A humiliating $156 billion financial bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund and an additional $45 billion under consideration. 10-year bonds yielding 15.6%. Looming default on May 19, when 8.5 billion Euros worth of bond payments come due. Greece’s perennial foe, Turkey, backing Iran’s nuclear swap. Iran elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. Concerns over their insolvent pension fund, and, to top it off, the embarrassing adulterated olive oil scandal.

All these issues and more have weighed heavily on Aglaea, the Goddess of beauty, Euphrosyne, the Goddess of mirth and Thalia, the Goddess of good cheer. It shows.

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Current events, Myths and Legends, Politics, Uncategorized

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Ben Bernanke’s optimistic outlook for the economy

Picture of Ben Bernanke portayed as Pinocchio

Benocchio assures the public that inflation is under control

On Wednesday, April 27, 2011, for the very first time in history, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve held a press conference and took open questions from journalists representing prominent news organizations and prestigious financial publications.

During his opening statement, the Chairman denied that the liquidity being added through the quantitative easing program and the purchase of hundreds of billions in Treasury debt has contributed to inflation. He further asserted that the current rise in prices was a temporary phenomenon and that they would revert to historical norms in due time. The Chairman also reiterated the Federal Reserve’s commitment to maintaining a strong dollar. When Treasury Secretary Geithner made a similar statement in 2009 during an address to students at Beijing University, he elicited loud bursts of laughter from the audience.

These rosy predictions fly in the face of what ordinary consumers are experiencing on a daily basis when they shop for basic necessities. Just as the US Department of Agriculture predicted in October of last year, retail prices for fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, dairy products and meat have gone up dramatically, some of these registering annualized increases of as much as 14%.

The Consumer Price Index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics concedes a 3.6% inflation rate over the last 12 months for food purchased for consumption at home, and this is likely to be understated. Even McDonald’s Corporation announced last week that it expects inflation in food costs this year, and everybody knows that when the clown speaks, people listen.

Also, people need to get to the store and to their place of employment, assuming they are lucky enough to have a steady job. Over the last six months, gasoline has increased at a rate of more than 6% per month from $2.82 to $3.87 per gallon and there is no relief in sight from the destructive impact wrought upon budgets of families already stressed by the long recession the country has been experiencing.

Maybe the government really does have inflation under control as we’re being told, but more likely, the wooden man with the nicely trimmed beard and the prominent nose hasn’t filled up his car or been to the grocery store lately.

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Current events, Fantasy, Politics

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The CPAs Dance for Joy at the Arrival of Yet Another Tax Season

Henri Matisse painting "The Dance" with figures dressed in suits.

CPAs dance for joy!

The Accountants and Tax Preparers Full Employment Act has gone into full swing with the looming filing deadline in clear view. All over the country, an army of over a million sharply-dressed CPAs and accountants is gearing up for yet another marathon of digesting disorganized collections of receipts that arrived in supermarket bags and the proverbial shoeboxes brought in by their frazzled clients. Tax season for accountants is like Christmas season for retailers. This is where all the long hours are put in and all the money is made.

The bountiful extravaganza is the result of the prolific output of congressional tax writing committees, who in collaboration with the more than 15,000 lobbyists representing a gaggle of special interests, have succeed in concocting the vile sausage that is the US Tax Code, all the while billing over $3 billion in fees.

Incredible as it may seem, the 2010 U.S. tax code is 71,684 pages in length. That is enough to cover an entire acre of land or to create a trail of paper nearly 13 miles long. It contains some 600 forms, each designed to benefit one specific group or another

Nobody understands the tax code, least of all the legislators who wrote it or those in charge of enforcing it. During a recent interview on C-SPAN, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman conceded that one reason that he does not file his own taxes is because he believes the tax code is too complex. Indeed, his predecessor, Mark Everson, was of a similar mindset. Some 60% of Americans use a tax preparer, and another 20% use tax-preparation software.

And this may not even be enough. A few years ago, USA TODAY asked three tax experts, a CPA and two enrolled agents, to prepare an income tax return for a hypothetical family. None of the results agreed. Incredibly, a 2008 study found that when the IRS was contacted by taxpayers regarding a tax law issue, its experts gave out the wrong answer about 10% of the time.

There is nothing you can do about it, so it is best to join the accountants in their merrymaking and hope for the best on April 18.

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Current events, Politics

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Senator Claire McCaskill’s Carbon Folly

Senator Claire McCaskill as a Varga girl on the side of a B-24

Her critics are calling it “Claire Air”

Claire McCaskill, the senior U.S. Senator from Missouri has recently become mired in a sticky affair whereby allegations have been made in the news media regarding her extensive use of a chartered corporate aircraft for her air travel, some of which may have been for personal purposes, all the while billing the expense to the taxpayers. More importantly, it has been revealed that the aircraft used by the senator was registered to a Delaware corporation owned by her husband, a wealthy real estate developer whose considerable fortune came in large part from federal contracts. This would appear to be a conflict of interest of a type that politicians should always steer clear of.

In March 2007, the Senator flew from St. Louis to Hannibal, Missouri to attend an annual political event and billed taxpayers $1,220.44 for the trip. The distance between these two cities is only 116 miles and could have been driven in a couple hours, incurring a mileage cost of only $112.52 at the official government reimbursement rate of 48.5 cents per mile at the time.

Contrary to stories that have appeared in the media, the aircraft in question is not a twin-engine Piper, but rather a Swiss-made, single-engine turboprop Pilatus PC-12/45, a high-end pressurized executive transport plane with seats for 8 and a cockpit crew of 2.

This is not an environmentally-friendly way to travel. Taking into account time for start-up, taxing to and from the active runway, runup, cruise, St. Louis approach patterns and area traffic, this round trip flight could have easily taken two hours. The PC-12/45 is not very efficient for short flights at low speeds and low altitudes and can burn 500 lbs of fuel per hour under those conditions. With Jet-A fuel weighing about 6.8 lbs per gallon, this translates into about 147 gallons for the trip. A modest sedan getting 20 mpg would have required less than 12 gallons, by comparison.

The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that 23.9 pounds of carbon dioxide are produced for every gallon of jet fuel burned, so this short jaunt was responsible for needlessly releasing approximately 3,513 pounds of carbon dioxide into the Missouri skies.

Multiply this times the 89 flights said to have been flown, many of which were much longer in distance and a formidable carbon footprint starts to emerge, one that could have been avoided by using the humble automobile or a seat on a commercial carrier.

There was more in store for the tireless champion for transparency and fighting government waste and excess. Senator McCaskill promptly reimbursed the U.S. Treasury $88,000 this month for the 89 trips on the plane, a few of which were said to be for political purposes. In recent days it came to light that the Senator failed to pay property taxes on the aircraft after it was moved to Missouri four years ago. Its market value is estimated to be in the vicinity of $2.4 million, and St. Louis County calculated the outstanding tax bill to be $319,541, including penalties and interest. Senator McCaskill’s husband’s Delaware corporation, Timesaver LLC, paid approximately $287,000 a few days ago.

With her reelection campaign soon to be launched, it is all but certain that an in-depth investigation will follow in short order, with many additional lurid details emerging into the public venue.

The irony in this whole affair is that during the 2004 primaries for governor, then State Auditor Claire McCaskill successfully used this same argument against her opponent, incumbent Gov. William Holden, when she accused him of using the taxpayer-funded state airplane for more than 300 trips, some of which were for the purpose of attending sporting events.

Wait a minute, the Senator used to be an auditor…?

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Current events, Politics, Travel

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Two Spoiled Peas in a Pod

Portrait of Muammar Qaddafi and Charlie Sheen

Two spoiled peas in a pod

I’m not the first to notice the remarkable similarities between Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi and Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen.

It’s not just the dark sunglasses, the peculiar hats, Bunga Bunga sex parties and drug use, but also their strange rhetoric and bizarre declarations which have been covered in the press by ABC and other news agencies. Vanity Fair has even published a quiz on who said what. It’s really is hard to tell the difference between the two in their nutty and delusional ravings directed against all those who they perceive to have done them wrong.

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Current events, Politics

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President Obama Appoints a Cheese Czar

President Obama Appoints a Czar to manage the Federal Cheese Reserves

Dr. Al Gorgonzola, the newly appointed Cheese Czar

After reading alarming accounts in the news regarding the possibility of widespread food shortages in the near future, President Obama met with key officials in his cabinet to be briefed about possible measures he might propose in order to mitigate the impact on the citizenry.

The President had just seen the World Bank’s recently released Food Price Watch report which announced the disturbing news that the Bank’s Food Price Index had gone up by 15% in the three months between October 2010 and January 2011 and is a full 29% above its level a year ago. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization further stated that a 30% increase in food prices would be likely next year as well. The President’s advisors explained that a number of factors were at work, and that these were largely beyond anyone’s control, with global warming as the primary culprit. Among causes cited were devastating floods in Brazil, Pakistan and Australia, unprecedented droughts in Russia, Argentina and China and below average harvests in the United States and other countries. Increased demand and domestic inflation resulted in higher rice prices in some Asian and African countries and the diversion of corn for the production of ethanol was also considered to be a cause for increased prices in basic foodstuffs, including beef and poultry. In the United States, it is predicted that this year 40% of domestic corn production will be destined for processing into biofuels.

The officials were at a loss as to how to shield the US against this dangerous global phenomenon until Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack reminded the President of the existence of the nation’s Strategic Cheese Reserves, which are stockpiled deep underground in caves in Missouri. This hoard is the result of a longstanding federal program dating back to the Depression Era whereby the government purchased much of the excess cheese that was produced by the dairy industry. Only officials with high security clearances know for sure, but there is said to be well in excess of a million tons stored there with a current market value approaching $9 billion. Secretary Vilsack proposed that this cheese be mobilized and made available to needy people, much in the fashion as food stamps are today.

The President’s new Press Secretary, Jay Carney, even went as far as to suggest that Mr. Obama could garner favor among low-income voters by pitching bricks of cheddar from a White House balcony into a crowd of hungry, chronically unemployed, although the group unanimously discounted this idea.

The first lady was horrified at releasing the estimated 23 trillion calories stored in the cheese caves to an already overweight public, fearing that this would undermine her “Let’s Move” anti-obesity campaign. However, Mrs. Obama agreed to listen to all of the arguments put forth at the meeting.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar cautioned the President that for some time, the United States Geological Survey had been concerned that increasing underground geothermal activity caused by climate change could heat the cheese to the point where it would melt and violently erupt out through fissures in the rock, and potentially smother entire communities with a scalding yellow ooze. Secretary Salazar suggested that this would be an opportune time to release the stockpiles and clear out the caves, because FEMA would likely be incapable of dealing with a catastrophe of this nature, as their rescue launches would not be able to navigate in a medium as dense as molten cheese, which would quickly clog the heat exchangers on their engines.

Prior efforts to mitigate threats to the public and avoid a catastrophic caseous meltdown, numerous federal initiatives have been in place for some years. In 1995, the Department of Agriculture created a non-profit organization called Dairy Management, Inc. It is funded through assessments charged to the dairy producers and the taxpayer dollars and has a mandate to increase demand for U.S. dairy products.

Unfortunately, attempts to reduce the vast stores of cheese have only been met with moderate success. According to the New York Times, the best promotional efforts put forth by Dairy Management Inc. and the Department of Agriculture in their 2002 partnership with Pizza Hut in their celebrated 2002 “Summer of Cheese” only resulted in a meager incremental consumption of 102 million pounds cheese, which scarcely put a dent in the 1.3 million tons that are believed to exist in the nation’s underground repository.

Recognizing a unique opportunity to solve two worrisome problems at the same time, President Obama and his advisors moved swiftly to put a plan into action. Due to the magnitude and complexity of the undertaking, the President soon realized that it would be necessary to appoint a Cheese Czar to oversee the operation. After consulting his most trusted advisers, Mr. Obama soon settled on his leading candidate, a distinguished industry expert named Al Gorgonzola. Dr. Aloysius Gorgonzola earned his PhD in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin and later spent some time as an Assistant Professor at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research. As an articulate speaker and an authority on cheese production and long-term storage, Dr. Gorgonzola fit the bill perfectly for steering America’s cheese policy and running what would soon become a high-profile operation with considerable public and media visibility. Within days of his nomination, the White House held a formal ceremony in the Rose Garden and invited many of Washington’s luminaries to participate in Mr. Obama’s historic conveyance of the prestigious title of Cheese Czar to a beaming Dr. Gorgonzola.

When Fox News television host Greta Van Susteren read the White House release, she immediately recognized Dr. Gorgonzola as a fellow Wisconsin cheesehead, and quickly contacted his office to arrange for him to appear on her show, “On the Record” and defend his suggestion that the state’s iconic football team be renamed “The Green Cheese Packers” because they always shoot for the moon.

Illustration by Kim Harris
Story by Don Rudisuhle

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Animals, Current events, Fantasy, Politics

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